EDUCATING RITA by Willy Russell

RITA: But I don’t wanna be charming and delightful: funny. What’s

funny? I don’t wanna be funny. I wanna talk seriously with the rest of you,
I don’t wanna spend the night takin’ the piss, comin’ on with the funnies
because that’s the only way I can get into the conversation. I didn’t want to
come to your house just to play the court jester. I don’t want to be myself.
Me? What’s me? Some stupid woman who gives us all a laugh because
she thinks she can learn, because she thinks that one day she’ll be like the
rest of them, talking seriously, confidently, with knowledge, livin’ a
civilised life. Well, she can’t be like that really but bring her in because
she’s good for a laugh! I’m all right with you, here in this room; but when
I saw those people you were with I couldn’t come in. I would have seized
up. Because I’m a freak. I can’t talk to the people I live with any more.
An’ I can’t talk to likes of them on Saturday, or them out here, because I
can’t learn the language. I’m a half-caste. I went back to the pub where
Denny was, an’ me mother, an’ our Sandra, an’ her mates. I’d decided I
wasn’t comin’ here again. I went into the pub an’ they were singin’, all of
them singin’ some song they’d learnt from the juke box. An’ I stood in that
pub an’ thought, just what the frig am I trying to do? Why don’t I just pack
it in an’ stay with them, an’ join in the singin’? You think I can, don’t
you? Just because you pass a pub doorway an’ hear the singin’, you think
we’re all O.K., that we’re all survivin’, with the spirit intact. Well I did
join in with the singin, I didn’t ask any question, I just went along with it.
But when I looked around me mother had stopped singin, an’ she was
cryin’, but no one could get it out of her why she was crying’. Everyone
just said she was pissed an’ we should get her home. So we did, an’ on the
way I asked her why. I said, ‘Why are y’ cryin’, Mother?’ She said,
‘Because – because we could sing better songs than those’. Ten minutes
later, Denny had her laughing and singing again, pretending she hadn’t
said it. But she had. And that’s why I came back. And that’s why I’m
staying.